Funeral home owner goes on trial

STOCKTON - Looking ahead and making pre-planned funeral arrangements? Want to pay all the costs of death and burial ahead of time?

Kevin Parrish

STOCKTON - Looking ahead and making pre-planned funeral arrangements? Want to pay all the costs of death and burial ahead of time?

If so, know who you're dealing with and be careful.

That's the advice of the District Attorney's Office on the eve of a criminal trial, the State vs. Reginald Thompson, that starts today in San Joaquin County Superior Court.

Thompson, owner of Thompson's Funeral Home, formerly at 2118 Lafayette St., faces five felony and two misdemeanor counts of theft and grand theft, almost all of them involving elderly residents of Stockton.

The case received widespread media attention last summer when the Stockton Police Department, announcing the criminal investigation, asked for victims to come forth.

Many of them had been dealing with the southeast Stockton funeral home for years.

"My husband wanted to get arrangements taken care of," said 57-year-old Linda Campbell, "so we went down to Thompson's. That's how we got sucked in."

She and her husband, 92-year-old Preston Campbell, paid more than $5,000 for such services as embalming, transportation of the body and the casket costs. That was 2004.

They were told that the amount would be placed in an insurance policy with Iowa-based Homesteaders Life Co., a firm founded in 1906 to provide funeral funds.

Linda Campbell followed up with Homesteaders last year and was told by the company that it had no record of her policy.

In the meantime, Thompson had closed up, or moved, his business. It took a lot of digging, but eventually she tracked him down and asked for her money back. "Reggie asked me to give him one week," Linda Campbell said. "And then I never heard from him again."

She is one of seven plaintiffs against Thompson. There are six individuals, five in their 80s, and one business.

At least 20 other complaints sit in a stack of files on the desk of Deputy District Attorney Sherri Adams, who is the prosecutor for the case.

"They are not being prosecuted because we didn't have the manpower," said Adams. "I want the community to know that we couldn't get to all of these reports. There weren't enough detectives, and Stockton PD is so short-handed."

Attorney Russell Humphrey of Lodi is defending Thompson. He was unavailable for comment. No one answered the phone listed for Thompson.

Two of the other cases that will be examined during the trial:

» An 83-year-old woman named Minnie paid almost $3,000 in monthly payments toward a pre-arranged funeral, including burial in the same Stockton Rural Cemetery plot as her husband. After the amount was paid in full - and while attending another funeral at the midtown cemetery - she checked to make sure everything was in order only to have cemetery officials tell her they had never heard of her.

» When 57-year-old Ricky Cook died of congestive heart failure last year, his family had to wait five days after a promised date for his remains to be delivered. They also claim the coffin he was in was flimsy and cheaper than the one for which they had paid.

The trial is expected to last into the middle of next week. Proceedings are being heard by San Joaquin County Superior Court Judge Xapuri Villapudua.

Adams said Wednesday, at the end of jury selection, that there were lessons in the case for the broader community.

"Always double-check and verify pre-need arrangements," she said. "Contact the insurer and the cemetery, the trust. Diligence on their part is important.

"Most families wouldn't know they were victims until their loved one had died."